for the record (re: guns thread)

One day, this debate will move past this insane argument. This idea that 'good guys' always obey the law and that 'bad guys' always break it. Its such a black and white 'American' perspective, and it needs to be addressed.I break some laws. In some eyes, I'm a bad guy. I know someone who breaks more laws than me. And someone that breaks more laws than him. I know ex-gangsters, fences, thieves, drug dealers, poachers, prostitutes...These are 'bad guys' by most definitions, but not one of them has illegally owned guns (though they have all carried weapons from time to time, often illegally). I'd have to take a step up the 'bad guy' hierarchy before I'd have a good chance of coming into contact with a firearm.With sufficient restrictions - guns become very hard to get hold of, and too risky to possess. Anyone seen with a gun will find themselves having lots of questions asked of them, and most bad guys want to avoid having questions asked of them (ever notice how bad guys tend to obey traffic regulations?). Unfortanately, when guns are a big business, and the market is flooded, this seems like a pipe dream.Sure, in the US, with the prevalence of guns in the state that it is - such a world seems entirely alien, but that doesn't mean it is black and white. Is it easy, possible, or practical to reduce the number of guns in the US to the point where petty criminals don't bother with firearms? I don't know, but it is surely deserves more than writing it off with a slogan.

Well, might as well clarify this. The following weapons are illegal

• any firearm which is so designed or adapted that two or more missiles can be successively discharged without repeated pressure on the trigger.
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• any self-loading or pump-action rifled gun other than one which is chambered for .22 rim-fire cartridges.
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• any firearm which either has a barrel less than 30cm in length or is less than 60cm in length overall, other than an air weapon, a muzzle-loading gun or a firearm designed as signalling apparatus.
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• any self-loading or pump-action smooth bore gun which is not an air weapon or chambered for .22 rim-fire cartridges and either has a barrel less than 24 inches in length or is less than 40 inches in length overall.
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• any smooth bore revolver gun other than one which is chambered for 9mm rim-fire cartridges or a muzzle-loading gun.
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• any rocket launcher, or any mortar, for projecting a stabilised missile, other than a launcher or mortar designed for line throwing or pyrotechnic purposes or as signalling apparatus.
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• any air rifle, air gun or air pistol which uses, or is designed or adapted for use with, a self-contained gas cartridge system.
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• any weapon of whatever description designed or adapted for the discharge of any noxious liquid, gas or other thing.
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• any cartridge with a bullet so designed to explode on or immediately before impact, any ammunition containing or designed or adapted to contain any such noxious thing if capable of being used with a firearm of any description, any grenade, bomb or other like missile, or rocket or shell designed to explode as aforesaid.
  

There are two types of lisence. Shotgun and firearm. Shotgun licences are more lax (for example under 14s can theoretically posess a shotgun certificate and you only need to specify a reason for owning the certificate whereas you need a reason for each and every firearm (ie non-shotgun) owned). To acquire a licence you have to apply to the Chief Officer of Police in your area.Without a certificate, it is perfectly legal to fire a rifle that is owned by a certificate holder, on their land, as long as you abide by the conditions of the certificate. It is also legal to fire a weapon on open days by licenced clubs. Source

The scapegoat has changed significantly. It used to be comic books. And yet - in recent years, as game violence has become more realistic and gruesome...as horror movies have become more graphic and terrifying, television has become both more violent and more sexual... violent crime has decreased in the US. If that is ironic then it must be ironic that the loudest proponents of guns always blame other inanimate objects for the high firearm related death rate in the US. Rock n roll, Hip Hop, Leisure suit Larry, Doom, Grand Theft Auto, Black Sabbath....you name it - they have been vociferously attacked by the loudest of the gun proponents.God forbid that anyone should question the prevalence of easily accessible lethal weapons.

Lakes are to guns what guns are to nukes. We shouldn't blame nukes for their detonation, since they are blameless we should allow complete proliferation so that everyone has a suitable deterrent!Nobody is blaming lakes or guns or nukes. We are simply stating that we should build better safety barriers on road bends that oversea large bodies of water, that there should be more restrictions on firearms than there are currently, that we should do everything possible to limit the number of nations with possession of nuclear weapons.

It's no more of a side note than the lakes were a side note. That's fine, and we both no doubt have different views on how to achieve limiting the number and type of weapon available to the public. And now we both know that nobody is proposing something as absurd as blaming a noun!

Actually - you could be sued, so yes. That is one of the reasons there is compulsary motor insurance in many countries. I'd argue that there was a good chance he should accept at least partial liability for the incident, yes. So...hand grenades are fine? Its not like banning them would prevent people from killing each other indiscriminately. I could drown a shopping mall full of people, kill the police with my shoes and start an extended ATF type siege with a ring binder - so why the need for hand grenades?Nobody is saying that the murderers are not culpable. However - we are stating that liability isn't just at the feet of the murderers. If a police officer handcuffed a dangerous suspect, leaving the keys in it - would we not blame the officer for being an idiot when the suspect escapes? Sure - the suspect is at fault for escaping, but the police officer was at fault too.That several parties can share some of the liability should not be a complicated idea. The thing being blamed is not the gun! It is the proliferation of certain types of weapons which is being held partially liable here. If you don't agree - that is one thing, but at least understand what is being being blamed and for what. Agreed - and that is the actual debate at question! What should be at the top? Nukes? Gatling Guns? AK-47s, Grenade Launchers? Pistols? Shotguns? Right and nukes don't kill people, people kill people. so everyone should have nukes. The point is, the real problem is that people are assholes. The question is - what is the most powerful weaponry that we want average assholes to have?Sure some asshole will get hold of a nuke. We want as few assholes to have powerful weapons as possible.I always find it difficult to understand it when every defence in the world is put out there for gun proliferation. On the one hand someone says 'cars are deadlier than guns' but they want a gun to defend their home, not a car.Then they suggest that it is people that kill people, not weapons. That argument falls over because it doesn't justify drawing the line at any particular place. Do we draw the line at grenades? Chemical weapons? Anti aircraft weapons? After all, anti aircraft weapons don't kill airplane passengers - people do.

Its the same 'flow of logic' as 'guns don't kill people...people do'. As with any argument of 'x doesn't kill people...'. My point, that you missed, was that you cannot special plead for guns. That is the point of logic I was attempting to convey. Are you telling me that you do not want restrictions? You are happy for everyone to own high explosives and nuclear weapons?

So you don't think that if there was free and easy access to C4, more innocent people would be killed? What about a nuke in every home and sarin gas on every desk?

I never stated you said it, so why would you ask me to point out where you said it was OK? You never said it was OK. I asked you if you thouht it was OK and you have not answered. I asked this because you implied that between the two of us, I was the only person who wanted restrictions on weapon ownage. Either you are for restrictions, or you are not. Which is it? Finally! Of course it is insane. My point, for the nth time, is that guns are a very specific case. What is special about guns that you special plead for them, why is rule 'guns don't kill people' not equally applicable to every single weapon in the world? No - I have never stated that killing someone is always wrong. What if your country was attacked by aliens and you were the only survivor and the only way to defend yourself was with a nuclear weapon, are you saying that owning a nuclear weapon would be insane then? That is not a reason to special plead. You made a general defense - inanimate objects don't kill people. But you only wanted it to apply to guns and objects less powerful. That is special pleading, not a specific set of moral judgements. Why does your 'x don't kill people' rule only apply to weapons up to whatever firearm you have decided is the most powerful accepted weapon? I am asking for you to explain your judgements, not mindlessly repeat slogans. To repeat. You have never said it is okay for average civilians to be in posession of nuclear weapons. Of course, nuclear weapons don't kill people. I have never said you said it is okay for average civilians to be in posession of nuclear weapons. I have answered your question.It is not a fallacy to point out when others are special pleading.You put forward a general rule: Inanimate objects (eg lakes and guns) don't kill people, people do. You are now adding to that general rule, 'unless that inanimate object is too x'. What is x, I ask? Why are guns not too x, but rpgs/nukes (wherever you draw the line) are?When you exempt something from a certain rule, without justifying that exemption it is called special pleading. Hopefully you either already know this, or have looked it up by now. To help you out - you are exempting certain weapons from your rule. Now you need to justify it. All I am trying to do is hear what your justification is. That is all. I'm not arguing a point, I'm just asking you a question.

Correct. Correct. The point that is trying to be gotten across is that everybody agrees that certain weapons are too much. What is the justification for where you draw the lines? Correct. I'm talking about guns. I'm also talking about other things - trying to devise a universally applicable rule that can be consistently applied to decide if any given weapon is overkill. Of course they. The thing is: they are all still 'arms'.Remember what is being discussed here: Jon said that I was 'for restrictions' on weapon ownership. I asked him if he was not also for restrictions, and highlighted some extreme examples I was confident that he would be pro-restrictions on. That is all. I am not saying that guns and explosives and chemical weapons are not treated differently. What I was simply doing was showing that the slogan 'Guns don't kill people' can be shown to be absurd since it is essentially saying that objects that can cause harm should not be restricted because it requires human intervention.Naturally, guns have different uses from explosives, nuclear weapons and knives. All of which have their own use. I would be insane to imply otherwise. It is Jon that is making an absurd argument - that we shouldn't restrict access to an object because the object itself can do no harm without human intervention. It is absurd for the very reason that it equally (if not moreso) applies to nuclear weapons (most people can't arm a nuke, but most people can arm a gun, so a nuke is SAFER!). Since everybody agrees that nuclear proliferation is bad it gives us common ground to build some general rules as to what arms are OK for everyone to have access to.This is not a question of law, jar. The law on gun ownership in the US can easily be looked up, as it is for most countries. The issue at hand originally was 'should the law be changed, and if so in which direction should we change it (more or less restricted?). Now the issue is simply trying to get Jon to understand the issue (see the OP), not trying to convert him to hate guns, and trying to at least get him to stop misunderstanding people's position on the gun debate.

Jon: "You are for restrictions"
Me: "So are you, for example - nuclear weapons and explosives"
jar: "I have no problems with people owning [list of weapons]."
Me: "So you don't think proliferation of explosives or nuclear weapons might result in more innocents getting hurt?"
jar: "This thread is about guns, not other kinds of weapons"
Me: "Actually, this thread is about Jon misunderstanding the opposite side to the weapons debate and this subthread is me attempting to show Jon the absurd consequences of the logic that 'guns don't kill people...people do'. Many objects can only kill people with deliberate or accidental human intervention, nuclear weapons included.
jar: "I'm not Jon".Thanks for the productive and relevant debate there jar. Feel free to jump into the middle of a subthread at anytime and then later declare that you are not the original participant in the discussion.

A fact that nobody is disputing. Not under dispute. That is not under dispute. Not under debate. Fine.

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Now - about that slogan 'Guns don't kill people, people do'...the topic of this subthread. Care to comment, or just state facts of law and your opinions on gun restrictions? Or forget that, how about the OP - that Jon (and some other 'pro-gunners') seem to be unable to read/process/remember/represent correctly some of the people on the other side (more restrictive) of the gun control debate?Any comments at all to do with the topic? Or did you just want to make sure that I understand your position on the gun debate? To clarify I do understand your position on the gun debate, and any questions I had about your position were certainly cleared up in the first few pages of this thread.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Not a problem. Can you do two things, out of courtesy, though?1. Try and keep things on topic (as per the OP).
2. If you answer a question that is directed at someone else, make sure you are keeping in mind the context in which the question was being asked. Just blithely answering questions without heed to the context is confusing.This thread is busy enough without confusing merry-go-rounds of pointlessness.Cheers.

Erm. What rhetorical question? I am not talking about what weapons the 2nd ammendment is meant to protect, does protect or should protect. I am asking you to justify the statement 'guns don't kill people. People do', in such a way that we can't replace guns with an absurdly more powerful weapon. If you want to drop the slogan that's fine with me. Is the statement: "Guns don't kill people, people do" a true statement?If it is, then the statement:"nukes don't kill people, people do" is also true.And what information have we gained? Nothing! Neither statement serves as justification for proliferation of said weapon. They are both objects that require human intervention before people get killed by them. Thus neither object kill people on its own. People are required to use the weapons to kill people. That is the logical basis of your slogan isn't it? Correct. OF course you can special plead for anything you like. What I was implying is that special pleading is erroneous reasoning. OK, now we are getting somewhere. If you had simply said 'Guns are a special case because they are protected by the constitution' when I asked you, we could have avoided wasting all this time!Now - nobody is stating that the 2nd ammendment doesn't protect the ownership of certain guns. What is under question is - how protected should guns be? How much restriction should be in place? Should the second ammendment even exist?You know, the gun debate. Not the made up debate where some people think the debate is about what the law currently is. OK. So...now we have arrived at understanding the second ammendment you should be partway to understanding the debate. The debate is not 'what is the 2nd ammendment about'. That's an interesting debate, but that isn't the debate we're having right now.We're debating what is the most powerful weapon we should allow the citizenry to possess. Not what is the most powerful weapon a citizen is allowed to posess. That is a matter of law and can be looked up without too much problem. And nobody is saying they are. Indeed - nuclear weapons are being used as an extreme example that everybody can agree is neither covered under the 2nd ammendment nor are a good candidate for personal posession.Now. None of this has ANYTHING to do with the fallacious slogan 'Guns don't kill people. People do.' Do you agree that the slogan is erroneous, can be adapted to levels of absurdity and has no place in a gun debate?Genuine discussions on personal possession for the protection of a free state and well regulate militia and other merits or otherwise of gun ownership make for a much more intelligent and intellectually stimulating debate than pathetically banal slogans like you were putting forward in Message 106 as well as your arguments centred principally around that general message that preceded that. Indeed - and again let me congratulating you on actually responding to the points raised. Yes they are rights. The question is - should they be? The next question is 'what restrictions are we putting on gun ownership?'. Assuming you understand that your opponents are not denying the existence of the 2nd ammendment. That we are not blaming guns themselves. That we are not calling for all guns to be outright banned, and nobody is arguing that violence would cease with the eradication of firearms....then I'm perfectly happy to leave the thread at that. Correct! The topic was not 'does the ammendment intend for guns to be necessary to the security of a free state', since we all know that is so, the only problems have been your distorted characterisations of your opponents.Assuming you have now raised the bar of debate from the insane to the rational, this thread's purpose is complete.

Right - the thing being blamed is proliferation. easy access to the weapons. Policies and laws are not abstractions. We say that certain fiscal policies are causitive factors in debt management issues for instance. Nobody is saying weapon proliferation is the only thing to blame in the crimes comitted. Far from it, people have taken great pains to tell you that other parties are to blame (including of course the criminal). More than party can share some portion of the liability. We cannot rid the world of criminals and violent people. I'm sure there are policies and methods we could enact to reduce them. One solution proposed is to reduce the number of lethal weapons available. I know what your point is. That is why we bring up nukes and the like. Instead of going after nuclear proliferation we should just try and deter the violent idiots that get hold of nukes with harsh penalties?Sure - we do that. It is called crime and punishment. However, there are additional things we can do. Like try to reduce the number of nuclear weapons that are out there to begin with. Right - and it also does nothing for this debate since it equally applies to any and all weapons and the issue at hand is where do we draw the line. So bringing it up was completely pointless, neh? Not true at all. This mindset you have that only one factor can be at fault for the existence of crime, is absurd. We have a responsibility to prevent crime. If we paid police officers 50cents an hour - do you not think we would blame the resulting increase in crime that is sure to follow on the criminals alone? Heck - why have any policies, since they acheive nothing right? We should just blame bad people when they do bad things, shrug our shoulders and say 'ah well'.Proliferation of weapons is a contributing causitive factor in many US fatalities.That is all that is being said here. The question at hand is given this statement, should we reduce the number of weapons? Then don't say 'guns don't kill people...people do'. Since it is an empty and pointless slogan that contains no information. Any object can be substituted for guns in it so where does it get us. You should stick with your argument that they are necessary to the security of a free state. As I said - it actually says something about what you think. ...And at what point does a weapons become a liability, at what point does a weapon become a hamper to the security of a free state. Clearly everyone having nukes would hamper the security of a free state. The question put forward is exactly what is necessary in this age of fast travel? Which is what I said the debate was about. It isn't disagreeing with him that gets you called stupid. Its the stupid slogans you bring to the debate. It is statements like this: "A claim that has been made here over and over again is that increased guns = increased violence" - ie misrepresenting your opponents views time and time again. It's the casual way you threaten killing someone for mild inappropriate sexual conduct.I'm sure if you just argued that the deaths caused by the proliferation of hand guns is outweighed by lives saved by the security of a free state - you'd probably get a lot less flak!Nuggin isn't without blame for his temper of course - I'm not one for putting blame in just one place. I believe he was chastised by schraff on the issue. You aren't compelled to debate him though - there are plenty of other willing opponents.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : addendum